The Incarnation and Love





I woke up this morning thinking about the incarnation.  I know how that sounds.  This does not happen to me often.  I am not always thinking on such high ideals.  So much rattles around in my head, it's a wonder something true gets through.  Anyway, I was thinking about the incarnation and how God goes to all this trouble to become a man so that we can become more like him.  I was thinking, as I put my feet to the floor, what do I do to honor such an act of love.  Here is this God who has and is everything, He empties himself to become a human baby boy to die on the cross, and what am I doing to show love and respect for such an act.  I was hard pressed to come up with a good answer.  I remember hearing Fr. Alexander Golizin speak once in Great Lent about Christ dying on the cross, and how we need only die a little. I believe he meant die to our passions and that which keeps us from loving God and our brother.  Maybe if I could just love a little bit, that would honor the incarnation and the love of God for us.  Just a little bit.  How can I ever hope to love as God loves?  Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

Clarity

I had this moment of clarity today.   Today  I saw what I needed to see, and knew all will be well because I could see so clearly.  I love it when this happen, and look forward to what comes of it.  It is a good thing to grow up and be able to look at yourself and know what you had suspected all along.

My Small Plea to Make a Plan

Death has been on my mind a lot lately because I now work in the "End of Life" Industry.  It's a whole new world out there when you work so closely to an industry that services vulnerable people.   What I am learning now, is that we all need to educate ourselves in what our options are.  That is why I am working on my Green Burial Seminar.  I have learned so much in the last three months about what our rights are, and what we are told.  We all need to look at our mortality, and make plans.  It's so easy for our loved ones to be taken in hand and told what they need to do because we have not taken the time to make our own decisions on what we want.  I don't think that the industry is necessarily filled with folks waiting to take advantage.  From what I have seen, for the most part, are people who want to help people.  The trouble is that in the time of need we follow along conventional paths.  I spent all day working on my seminar.  I love this subject.  I need to start limiting my scope and make it pithy.  As the Queen of the Nutshell, this appeals to me.  Make a plan.  Talk with those you love!  You never know what is around the corner.

The Wall

It's strange to me how sometimes in life we come to a point were all seems hopeless and we just do not want to go on, and we give up.  Then if we just move a little toward what we want all changes, and we are able to move.  Sometimes this feels like a tangible wall.  Sometimes it feels deep down in your gut and it's just a terrible feeling like nothing is right.  I find this interesting and strange.  Sometimes it goes on for quite sometime and it's a dark night of the soul, and sometimes it's the afternoon or a few days.  What I learn from this is that once I let go of the control factor, things tend to settle into place.  Maybe it's the letting go of the ego of the situation.  I know me ego gets in the way of lots of things that I can accomplish.  That is to say, I get in my own way.  What I am struck with is the moment before things change, that sometimes is indeed dark.  If I can give up my ego and continue down the path that I am convinced is correct, things get much better.

Babies and Mothers

A mother came in yesterday to talk about the marker of her baby who died thirty years ago.  Her grief was palpable.  She kept telling me that she and her husband did not have the money at the time to complete the marker and wanted to do so now.  She looked to me like any mother who wants the best for her babies, and who could just not do it at the time, but did her very best.  I could not find all the information we needed for all the details she wanted to know.  We will meet later.  I went out to search out the grave.  I am new and I need to learn the park, and I wanted to have some idea  what kind of marker I was dealing with.  I found it, along with the bouquet with a beautiful white ribbon.  I know the father did not come with her, and I know that the anniversary date was soon.  I cried for her, her baby and for the near loss of my own babies.  Some of the story I had not told my sweet husband until this morning because it was so terrible and scary and near bleak.  I am so grateful for my two boys, and my own life.  Had I had these babies a eighty years ago, I would not have survived the first and if I had, the second child would not have lived.  I live everyday with  miracles, gifts I do not deserve.  Peace to all mothers.

There's No Justice. There's Just Us

For a week or more I have had this little saying I read in a Canadian women's prison running through my head.  I used to think it was the women acting out and feeling sorry for themselves.  I think it would be easy to do in prison, sometimes I manage to do so without the benefit of being incarcerated.  I have been thinking that there really is not real justice when it comes to humans passing it out.  We are flawed and tend towards wanting to enslave each other in one way or another.  As Christians we hope in the justice of God knowing  it is a justice of love.  Sometimes I wonder if I could handle that.  If we follow Christ, we know that we are here to love each other.  I mean we are to love the person next to us, the one most immediate.  I am not always very good about that.  I tend to love the ones that are easy for me to love.  What I want to do is to love more boldly and love those who I find hard to love.  In that way, the world changes.  I do not believe we can change the world for the better, making people do things they do not want to do just because it makes our lives softer.  In a nutshell, there is not justice, there is just us.  All we have is each other, and we may as well try to love each other more if we want to change the world. 

Connected

This last week, I sat with no fewer than three families who had lost their loved ones.  I am amazed that my work  brings me into contact with people at such tender times in their lives.  On Friday, I led a funeral of a man who served for his country.  I am sorry to say, that while I have access to some of his military record, I had not found the time to read it.  I have no idea where he served to what he did.  What I do know is that the Navy sent out two of her men to attend the funeral and perform the full military honors due him.  I pulled up, and because I was the lead car, I was the first car my car was saluted.  I felt completely unworthy of it, and of course I am.  When have I risked my life for countless many who I do not even know and those yet unborn.  As I got out and waited for him to be carried out of the hearse, I was struck again that while this was a family event, all of us were touched in someway by this man and somehow that makes it a public event.  I stood there and thought of how all of us are connected in ways we do not even know and how we all belong to one another.  Every person is part of our lives in one way or another.  We are the same humanity, and our actions effect the lives of everyone on the planet.  This gives me pause.  I know I am responsible for my actions and I can not even begin to see what they do to those I have not met, and to those yet unborn.  May I keep getting back up, every time I fall.  May I learn to love and serve my brother I have yet to meet.  May my heart open to the possibilities of love. May I be peace.